Iran and What Might Have Been

Several of Rod Dreher’s commenters have responded cogently to his interesting thought experiment:

Thought experiment: given events of the past three decades in Iran, how much violence do you think the Shah’s repressive government ought to have been willing to inflict on pro-Khomeini Iranians to prevent the Islamic Republic from coming into existence? I’m not asking rhetorically, and I don’t know how I would answer that question. Just throwing it out there. I have no idea what the White House should do right now, because it is not clear to me that there is any possible outcome in Egypt that is less than horrifying. People who are certain that the US should cut off the military government in Cairo, though, should ask themselves what, in retrospect, the Shah’s government should have been prepared to do to prevent the Islamist horror show that has kept Iran bound since 1979. (Or, for that matter, how many Bolsheviks the Tsar’s despotic government should have shot to save Russia from the infinitely worse curse of Soviet communism.)

The analogy is instructive, probably because many Americans have acquired a somewhat rosy memory of the Shah’s Iran, or at least fondness for the time when the country didn’t cause America much in the way of problems. But no one should mistake the Shah’s reign as some sort of golden age for Iranians. To give a sense, here is Kenneth Pollack in The Persian Puzzle (Pollack, who once reigned as the neocons favorite Capitol Hill liberal, is certainly no dove) on the American record with the Shah:

The one area in which the United States neglect of Iran was most damaging—and most difficult to forgive—was in the sphere of human rights. The shah’s police state terrorized the Iranian populace. Tens of thousands may have been tortured by SAVAK, and at least thousands were murdered. Despite the efforts of Iranians and others to prove it, no evidence has ever been produced that the United States directly aided SAVAK in this grisly record…But we did turn a deaf ear too those pleading for our help to stop these practices.

The US government certainly did want the Shah’s dictatorship to survive, and sent numerous emissaries to bolster it when it began to falter. But it was hard to know how or where to stop the revolution once it started. The anti-Shah demonstrations which snowballed in 1978 made the Iranian revolution the most popularly engaged revolution in human history, according to one serious assessment. Ten percent of the Iranian population participated in anti-regime demonstrations or general strikes, versus two percent of the French and one percent of the Russians, during their respective revolutions. (And this before Twitter!)

This comparison shouldn’t be used to whitewash crimes committed by the Iranian Islamic Republic, which has been just as brutal towards domestic dissenters as the Shah, and perhaps more so. It’s hard to conclude other than that the Iranian people have been besieged by bad government for more than sixty years, at least—a period broken by a few interludes during which things promised to get better (the election of Khatami in 1997 was one; this year’s election of Rouhani may be another.)

But it is also worth remembering that the Shah was imposed on Iran by a CIA sponsored coup—where he replaced an Iranian nationalist who was, at least by prevailing standards, the most democratic ruler in the Mideast. This coup and what it represents has become the dominant historical memory of modern Iran, and it wouldn’t be unwise for Americans to give some weight to the historical memory and what it means for the victimized people (as we certainly do with the memories of blacks, Jews, Irish [vis a vis the English] and numerous other groups).

Yesterday, in response to a freedom of information act request, the CIA released a history that acknowledged US complicity in the 1953 coup—not that there was ever any doubt about it. Perhaps the timing of the release was meant a veiled signal to Iran’s new government, that America is willing to face facts. Perhaps it was random. In any case, from an Iranian perspective and probably from a neutral one, the United States has done infinitely more harm to Iran than vice versa. The sort of historical hypotheticals Dreher introduced are often extremely useful, as they they can lay the groundwork for real thought and understanding. Here’s another one: How would Iran have turned out if the CIA had not engineered a coup against its government in 1953?

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30 Responses to Iran and What Might Have Been

Along with Dreher’s question of how much torture and murder the US should fund, it’s important to ask what percentage chance this produces an outcome we’d find congenial, over which time horizon.

It seems to me that we might be better off refraining from treating the world as a chessboard in situations like this. Other people don’t seem to like it very much. Propping up dictators harms the appeal of our ostensible values, and therefore over time our interests. (I could be underselling the impact of the Suez Canal falling into chaos).

(Plus, why fund brutality against relatively small movements like the Muslim Brotherhood? It was at least comprehensible that we’d fight the Soviets by inflicting coups on unfortunate democracies; the Soviets had a powerful country.)

How would Iran have turned out if the CIA had not engineered a coup against its government in 1953?

Yes to this. One only has to see how often the Iranian mullahs drag up the specter of American involvement in installing and propping up the Shah. Would the current regime have been able to sustain such an anti-West rhetoric with any success had it not been for the US sins of commission and omission during the Shah era?

Scott, I was in the Rome Station back during the rising against the Shah and, as I recall, there was a steady stream of reporting indicating that Iranian soldiers, who were largely conscripts, were refusing to fire on civilians. That means that the Iranian Army might have been unable to do anything to stop the revolution, even if it had been willing to engage in a bloodbath. The Egyptian Army is also more than 50% conscript, yet as far as I can tell no one is asking how they will respond if called upon to act in an all out civil war. They too might refuse to obey orders.

The events in Egypt, and earlier in Iran, are a reminder that people’s aspirations can only be bottled up so long before they reemerge stronger than ever. Recently in a column, Pat Buchanan made a fleeting reference to the failed Decembrist Uprising in Russia. What he failed to mention was that the governing Bolsheviks celebrated the centennial of that revolt in 1925.

Just as the Iranians vanquished their humiliation at the hands of the British and Americans in 1953 by ousting the Shah during their revolution in 1979, the Egyptians and Arabs will someday, somehow find a mahdi to vanquish what they believe is their humiliation at the hands of the West. Hopefully, this will not come after the West has exhausted itself in endless wars and internal conflicts in the Middle East and Central Asia. Numerous Roman and Byzantine emperors exhausted their empires by fighting with Parthia, Persia, and Bactria (roughly in the same area we’re still concerned about).

My humble recommendation to China and India: Deal with your own problems and steer clear of this mess. Then, sit back and enjoy watching the West and Islam engage in mutually self-destructive struggles to achieve dominance over an exhausted West and Middle East.

A case can be made for almost any alternative history, given so many variables and forks in the road to the present.

One possible outcome if there had been no coup and the nationalist more or less democratic government had been allowed to stand is that Iran would have developed faster and would have been more of a dominant power in the middle east than today. I think that would have been a good thing. It would have been more like today’s Turkey.

The CIA document release “acknowledged US complicity in the 1953 coup—not that there was ever any doubt about it.”

The UK still officially denies complicity, even in the face of these documents.

I was a long time coming to it – once having been one who viewed the Shah through rose-colored glasses – he was even favorably interviewed on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club after being deposed in the heyday of that network – but the record as revealed, by disclosures authorized or from whistleblowers, is clear.

U.S. foreign policy’s stated aim is in deep conflict with its actual practice. An American people idealistic about democracy, freedom and liberty is not going to pragmatically approve of repression overseas in furtherance of elite economic interests, no matter how formerly American that ownership class used to be.

Rather than follow the principles of the American people, democratic accountability is undermined by acting contrary to those principles and instead engaging in manufacturing consent through propaganda.

The truth is still the truth, and not so easily abolished by opinion – hence a cognitive dissonance about the causes of the inevitable blowback that repression of others engenders.

Would that there was a democratic bias to cooperation, rather than the totalitarian bent to military coercion, the United States could have been a positive force in the world, rather than what Dr. King sadly prophesied in his final major speech – or, in fact what even Dwight Eisenhower warned about this temptation on leaving the Presidency, rather than what he himself approved in 1953 about overthrowing Iranian democracy.

“It’s a shame the Iranians rebelled against a police state just to be forced into a theocratic police state.”

How many elections did the Shah hold?

If we have our own national security state now, how does that fit into our jingoistic “One Nation Under God” and “In God We Trust” divine mandate for Manifest Destiny as the saviors of the world through Full Spectrum Dominance(tm) ?

Around 2000, a careful and comprehensive study of trial and SAVAK records under the Shah (between 53 and 79) could authenticate around 3600 political deaths, including all those killed throughout the revolution. The figure is smaller by at least an order of magnitude than the numbers bandied about during the revolution. Altogether, over the course of 25 years, there were 300 executions for terrorist activity, a similar number of disappearances and extra-judicial killings, and the rest were killed in two uprisings in 63 and 78-79. The figures are reliable because 1) they are official Iranian numbers, and 2) more important, they seriously undercut one of the major arguments against the Shah during the revolution. (They debunk, for example, the allegation that on the Day of the Martyrs, 7,000 people were killed in one morning. The number is closer to dozens. This is how myths are made, however.) The numbers do not include people killed by terrorists or in terrorist activities. In one such instance, 700 people were incinerated in a movie theatre; the Islamists burned the place down and blamed the regime, and the blame stuck.

Between February and June 1979, revolutionary courts are on the record as having ordered, and carried out, about 4600 executions directly related to “crimes” under the Shah (these included not only generals and soldiers, but former politicians, and four “notorious” brothel-keepers). In 1981 there was another wave – in the thousands – and then in 1988, when at least 4600 were summarily executed on Khomeini’s orders.

To this toll must be added the casualties of the Iran-Iraq war (up to one million), which would not have happened under the Shah.

So – how many should the Shah have mowed down? How many of my middle class and educated aunts and uncles and cousins who were peacefully in the streets demanding only the right to control their own future and have a say in the management of the country’s wealth should have been killed by soldiers or helicopter gunships, to avoid the horrors that would follow? The Shah never doubted for one minutes the horror that would, and did, follow; neither did my Royalist side of the family. And yes, Indonesia killed half a million and spared itself the horrors of communist rule …

But it is a dangerous game to play. For fear of an uncertain future, to put to certain death young and old, man and woman, educated and illiterate …

The Shah, for all his mistakes – and they were legion – did not listen to those who advocated more violence. He had once said that it was no honor for him to reign over an impoverished and illiterate populace, and it was partly that zeal to drag Iran into the modern world, to make it a country of which he could proudly be a king, that undid his regime. It would not have been in his character, in the character even of his murderous regime, to put more people than he did in the morgue.

And, frankly, for all his mistakes, for all the ill that followed, if the Shah were known for that last act of forebearance that took him to permanent exile rather than committing a crime that would place him in the same hall of infamy as Idi Amin and Suharto, he will have secured his legacy among Iran’s lamentable record of leaders.

As we go further into the future I predict that Western Historian will re-evaluate the West’s actions against the Communist parties of the third world to have been a strategic error. What policy makers in the Cold War west missed was that in much of the Third World the communist party was the force most capable of bringing that country to western values in the future whereas many of the natavist authoritarian regimes the West backed in the 50s and the 60s have morphed into vicious anti-western cultures and polities (indonesia, iran, egypt, turkey). One need only look at modern Vietnam and China to begin to doubt the wisdom of stopping the communist party in Indonesia, of overthrowing the socialists in Iran, even of stopping the Soviets in Afghanistan. And as far as I am concerned, the mistake continues in Syria, where a socialist secular despot is being overthrown by religious reactionaries with the approval of the West. This is foreign policy suicide.

That being said there are some “big” exceptions. Pol Pots Cambodia. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Post colonial Algeria. Perhaps the real lesson is that every national politics has its own details and broad theories of freedom in politics are best left in textbooks and away from policy makers.

Northern Observer, I don’t understand your reference to Mugabe, in practically the same breath as Pol Pot. Mugabe is a self-interested thug, true enough. On the other hand, he was, at least initially, freely elected to his position, and continues to enjoy the support of roughly half the population, plus or minus. Moreover, his crimes, grave as they are, are more those of a Tony Soprano than of a Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, still less of a Pol Pot.

Indonesia is a pro-Western democracy today and in fact is one of the most democratic Muslim countries in the world. Now Indonesia does have a problem with Islamists, both terrorists and political parties, but that’s the case with just about every Muslim country today. Even Hindu-majority India, the world’s largest liberal democracy, has long had a problem with Hindu, Islamic, and Sikh extremists. And China and Vietnam may have modernized their economies, but they haven’t modernized their political systems yet. Both countries are still major human rights offenders and China is fast becoming a major threat to the national security of the United States and our allies in the Asia-Pacific region and around the world.

It’s probably not the case that committing mass violence against dissidents or revolutionaries––Islamist or otherwise––will in fact prevent a revolutionary gov’t from coming to power. If the Shah had shot all the Khomeinis of Iran, he’d have had to kill a significant portion of the population; would that somehow legitimate his rule and stem the radical tide? No, it would have exacerbated it; Dreher’s question is flawed in principle.

Perhpas one should note here that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the events of 1953 were “water under the bridge” and did not pose a signficant problem in any improvement of America’s relations with Iran.

“To this toll must be added the casualties of the Iran-Iraq war (up to one million), which would not have happened under the Shah.”

Iraq started this war with a wink and a blink from his Uncle CIA Sam.

I remember US network reports the first week or two predicting an Iranian collapse and Iraqi victory. When the Iranians fought back to defend their own soil our networks and government were disappointed.

The real trouble with having an Empire is that it morally rots the Home Country.

The question all this brings up of course is when the U.S. should be meddling in other countries’ doings and while I have no succinct universal acid test to recommend (one can say where our interests are “vital,” but that just pushes the question back that one notch), I’d at least argue that our circumstances in opposing communism were very different than they are now or are likely to be.

(So meaning that I think our meddlings to oppose same was far far more justified than now, even accepting Northern Observer’s very fresh and intelligent observations.)

To me at least communism was a sui generis sort of thing, with it being a huge mistake to do as Dreher and others somewhat at least allow which is to compare out meddlings opposing same with meddlings otherwise directed.

Sui generis in lots of ways indeed: In its Leninist form its amazing ability to be instituted by an incredibly small number of committed conspirators, and then further in its ability to sustain itself despite its monumental failures, and of course in what can seem its invariably need to inflict mass horrors.

Of course for their own self-interested reasons one hears our neo-cons all the time comparing the present Islamist fervor with Leninist Bolshevism, but that’s just a comparison that ought to be welcomed, it seems to me, for its obvious foolishness. As even the fall of the Shah shows, it took millions there to accomplish same, and there has been a huge moderation of Khomeinism, and we haven’t seen the institutionalization of terror there that was seen in the USSR or Mao’s China or in Cambodia or … you-name-it-wherever-else the Leninists took over. And while of course you’ll find this or that Islamist loudmouth uttering the word “Caliphate,” quite obviously the Islamist movement is more directed at getting the West *out* of its lands, rather than absorbing the West *into* same.

For a whole constellation of malignant reasons Bolshevik communism was different I think, from the Islamicist movement and maybe even from all other movements history has ever thrown up, and should be regarded as such.

“The CIA argued then that Iran was threatening Western security by not cooperating with the West — at the time, by refusing to bargain with the British-run Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. — thereby threatening the supply of cheap oil to Britain and risking a British invasion that could in turn trigger a counter Soviet invasion of Iranian oilfields.”

Yesterday’s war was the seed of today’s disasters. The CIA feared (with some reason) that Mossadegh would open Iran to the Soviets, breaching our doctrinal containment of the USSR and giving the Russians the southern route to the ocean they had sought since the days of the Great Game against the British Empire. Yet since 1979 the U.S. has paid a steep price for its intervention in Iran to block the Soviets.

Similarly, fear of the Soviets expanding their power southward drove Carter and Reagan to support the Taliban in Afghanistan, giving rise to al Qaeda.

Our coup against Mossadegh (in many ways a truly great man) was criminal. And our backing of the Taliban was obviously disastrous to our own security. But hindsight is 20/20. In the thick of the Cold War, we weren’t worried about Muslim jihad, but about Marxist world revolution. Given what U.S. national security folks knew when they made the decisions against Mossadegh and for the Taliban, there decisions, while remaining regrettable, are actually pretty understandable. I don’t know that I could have done better.

Let’s not forget that in 1978-79, the Shah was a dying man and the energy and vigor he would need to hold onto the Peacock Throne in the wake of a popular uprising was fading from him. It affected the whole ruling establishment and made them realize that, like in Egypt, the old leader would have to go if they were going to save themselves. Of course they couldn’t. The difference with Egypt is the establishment (military, state bureacracies) working with the secular liberals to rule to country in the wake of Muslim opposition. In Iran it was the exact opposite, the liberals joined with the Muslims. In both cases the liberals found out when it was too late how used they were by those who knew how to wield power.

The US, coming out of WW2, was admired as champion of freedom and looked to for support by nationalists like Mossedeq, as it had no history of colonialism dragging it down.

What would have happened if America had thrown its full support behind the nationalist, some democratic, fights in the post-war period instead of trying to protect the last vestiges of English, Dutch and French colonialism? The tilt towards the Soviets by Ho Chi Ming and Fidel Castro was not inevitable but expedient. They could have just as easily tilted towards the US if we gave them support first instead of backing Batista and other trying to put the brake on history. In fact, that is what George Kennan first meant by his ‘containment’ policy – to win over the ‘hearts and minds’ of nations by example. Instead, the US backed many of those fighting against national independence in the name of the Cold War. Militant Islam grew as a political movement in the 70s after stale autocracies in Asia and Africa had settled in.

TomB, if you think Muslims merely want us out of “their lands”, you are not paying attention to events in Western countries which have foolishly allowed large numbers of Muslims to settle there — the UK, Sweden, and France above all, and to a lesser extent Denmark and Italy.

First, “Muslim lands” are “theirs” very often because they used violence and intimidation to kill or drive out Christians and Jews, as in Syria, Lebanon, and now recently in Egypt and Iraq (using the admittedly unjustified US invasions as a justification or pretext for the slaughter and arsons).

Second, Muslims have become more and more aggressive, not just politically and socially but physically, as their numbers grow in those countries and the native European populations lose their common sense, courage, and will to preserve their lives and culture. They want sharia oppression in all the countries where they settle, and eventually they will get it on current trends.

Cameyer, you took the words right out of my mouth. Nothing more tragic than the numerous overtures by Ho Chi Minh to American presidents to help dismantle the French empire in Indo-China, and America’s constant rebuffs. We could have had a stalwart ally in that nation had we been true to our values. So sad.

I would only add to your comments that militant Islam arose only after Arabs tried pan-Arabism, flirted with the Nazis (if not “Nazism”), socialism and finaly socialist-pan-Arabism. After those movements failed, out of frustration they declared that government must be subsumed to Islam, but the goal remains the same: remove Western influence in their countries.

EarlyBird, you wrote this: ” Nothing more tragic than the numerous overtures by Ho Chi Minh to American presidents to help dismantle the French empire in Indo-China, and America’s constant rebuffs. We could have had a stalwart ally in that nation had we been true to our values. So sad.”

France was one of our closest allies and Ho Chi Minh was a committed Communist. It was a no-brainer as to who we would side with. We actually have nothing against imperialism and colonialism if it is practiced by democracies. We are a product of colonialism and practiced it ourselves, both in North America and overseas.

He didn’t start out that way. His life’s mission was Vietnamese independence. He would have used any support available to him to get there. He used Communist backing because it was the tool available to him, but he first appealed numerous times to the West.

HCM famously quoted Jefferson in his appeals to Woodrow Wilson and other US presidents for help, and was inspired by his time working in the US and other Western nations. He and his Viet Minh forces worked directly with the OSS against the French Vichy government and Japanese in Vietnam during WWII. We had a working relationship with him and a very good chance at co-opting the movement from the communists.

I understand that hindsight is 20/20. It was correct to fight communism, just a shame that we missed the opportunity in front of us and pushed the Vietnamese independence movement into communist hands.

“…We actually have nothing against imperialism and colonialism if it is practiced by democracies.”